"Sean McMullen - An Empty Wheelhouse" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

dangerous in pioneering times.
 "Nae dangerous, just a wee bit unsafe. I suppose it was like America in many ways, and there
were actually a lot of American boats shipped oot here before the locals learned to build reliable
boilers. There were a few American captains oot here as well. Gus Pierce from Massachusetts was
the most famous. He came tae Melbourne as a sailor during the gold rush. He was just a teenager,
and he jumped ship and swam ashore in his underwear when the captain locked up the crews'
clothing tae stop them deserting. He found nae much gold, but he worked his way up tae riverboat
captain after a few years. He was a real character! When he retired he said that he came tae
Australia withoot a penny, but left owing hundreds of pounds."
"Gus Pierce, you say?" I replied. "Was he interesting? Are there any tall tales about him?"
The captain laughed. "The only tales aboot Gus are tall tales, lassie. He's supposed tae have
rammed and sunk a steam barge from under an Irishman named Bren Hooligan. Said that
Hooligan stole some special beasties that could dive underwater tae find gold."
"Now that is a tall story."
"Aye, and let's see now, that would have been 1867, when he was Captain of the sternwheeler
Lady Daly. Funny, because Gus dinna like tae talk aboot that ramming. Other things, well ye'd
nae shut him up. I asked him aboot it when we met back in 1875, but he told me tae mind my own
business. Nothing in the records, either."
"So there's no record of the ramming? Is it just a tall story?"
"Well... it's hard tae say. Records get lost if a bushfire destroys a town hall-- along with the rest
of the town. Happened a lot in the pioneering days."
"Uh, bushfires?"
"Forest fires, ye'd call them. Now fires were also a problem with the old paddle-steamers.
Sparks frae the funnels burned holes in passengers' clothes, even set fire tae the cargos. Why later
in 1867 the Lady Daly's sister ship, the Lady Darling, was lost when her cargo of brandy caught fire
near Wahgunyah. Burned tae the waterline, she did, and there were grown men watching frae the
riverbank in tears. Getting back tae that ramming, though, my chief fireman was on the Lady
Daly when it happened. He was only fourteen at the time, mind. Pirate Bollinger, that's him.
Rough as auld bags but a good lad. Would ye like tae meet him?"
I declined his offer. I had not come halfway around the world to meet some coarse and vulgar
stoker. Captain McGinty then told me about another American, Peleg Jackson, who had been the
previous Captain of the Lady Daly, and who flew the Stars and Stripes when-- "
Helen booted up her Toshiba and typed in the passage before reading on. There was no more about
Hooligan, so she returned to her hotel early and sent off the passage as Internet mail. One attempt to
drive a hire car through some apparently suicidal Boston traffic was enough to confine her to her hotel
room while the eyes on the other end of the Internet link made what they would of Sibil J. Henderson's
adventures in nineteenth-century Australia. This time the wait was a single hour.
RECD: SATISFACTORY. FLIGHT TO MELBOURNE BOOKED. CHECK AIRPORT.
Satisfactory? That was an expression of ecstasy when compared to earlier replies. She wondered if
they had meant Melbourne Florida or Melbourne Australia, but was not really surprised when her call to
the airport was directed to international departures.
The flight was to San Francisco, then Honolulu, Auckland and Melbourne. That meant a chance to see
Neil, and to spend precious hours on the ground. He was working on the eastern coast of Hawaii, on a
field trip near a recent lava flow. Using her own money she booked an Aloha flight and a rental car after
rescheduling the rest of the journey.
It was clear that her status with Neil had been reduced to that of interloper. A bronzed microbiologist
wearing a white bikini of open-weave string regarded her suspiciously from the field station as they
walked along the black volcanic sand. They had a lot to talk about, but somehow nothing important
could be said.
"If an animal could find gold, how would it go about it?" she asked, on the brink of talking about the